Equity stops Chicago musical pay cuts – archive

Equity, the actors’ union, has ensured that the cast of the struggling West End musical, Chicago, will not have to accept cuts in salaries by paying £5,000 into the production from its emergency fighting fund for the theatre.

In return, Mr Peter Plouviez, Equity’s general secretary, said that the show’s producer, Mr Larry Parnes, had guaranteed employment for the 31 members of the company for 11 weeks. “I’m delighted,” he said. “It’s just the kind of musical which could pick up.”

The agreement, which includes the promise by Mr Parnes of a midnight matinee of the musical with proceeds donated to the union’s theatre fund, was reached after three hours of negotiation between the two men on Friday.

Earlier, there had been a tense encounter between Mr Plouviez and members of the cast when he told them that Mr Parnes’s idea of saving the show by giving the performers new contracts and reduced salaries contravened an agreement between the union and the Society of West End Theatres (SWET) representing theatre producers.

It is the first time that the union’s fighting fund for the theatre has been used to save a West End show from closure. Mr Plouviez has committed about 25 per cent of its total resources, which consist largely of donations from television and film companies, to the saving of the show. But a proportion of this money will be recouped by the midnight matinee, and the action averts a situation in which a company of 31 would have been put out of work.

Chicago enjoyed initial success with the public and considerable acclaim from the critics but has recently been playing to about 50 per cent capacity.

Equity has accused the foreign labour department of the Department of Employment of ignoring its advice on which foreign actors are allowed to work in the country. In a letter to the Employment Secretary, Mr Prior, the union says : “Increasingly, our impression is that the foreign labour department is likely to capitulate to whoever puts on it the greatest pressure.”

Equity’s letter follows the granting of a permit to Mr Christopher Sarandon, the American TV actor to play the leading role of Sidney Carton in Lord Grade’s new television film of Charles Dickens’s, Tale Of Two Cities.

The union is consulted by the Department of Employment’s foreign labour department about the granting of permits and points out that “blind chauvinism” does not affect its advice. It has approved permits for 1,300 foreign artists in the last year but has recently been overruled by the department three times.

The union believes that an “exceptional and damaging” change in policy has taken place and that it must now begin to think of “industrial action” as its method of protecting the employment of British actors. Mr Plouviez stressed yesterday that Equity had no feud or disagreement with its American counterpart, American Equity.